It’s raining, its sunny, it’s freezing, it’s snowing, it’s citrus season, baby! Talk about my favourite season because it’s also agbalumo season, and though I’m far from home, away from the source of that joy, I can bask in the joy here – of juice oranges and ugli, sanguinello and kumquats, tangerines, tangelos, mandarins and...
aka Agbado yinyan. It is the season for tasty oranges, cucumbers, pineapples and pyramids of Ube, purple African pears that must be roasted on hot coals or soaked in freshly boiled water to eat. When cooked, they taste like avocado, cut through with green olives and a touch of cream. It is our rainy season...
This piece is long overdue – sigh but finally, it’s here. Agbalumo is out of season but still…the words, the thought, the ideas remain evergreen! Thank you, Akay xxx I grew up in an Igbo household in Lagos. And while steeped in Igbo culture, I have always been around and influenced by Yoruba culture. I...
![A Visual [Botanical?] Guide to Varieties of Agbalumo](https://www.kitchenbutterfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/VarietiesAgbalumo.png "VarietiesAgbalumo")
It might surprise you – like it did I – that there are different varieties (or cultivars/ cultivated varieties?) of Agbalumo, distinct in shape, colour and size. Many factors come into play in describing fruit. On the basis of a number of observations, I dare say I can identify at least 6 varieties – here we...
‘Nigerian Seasonal Produce’ is a monthly column published on the last Saturday of each month. In this column, a writer explores a specific seasonal fruit, vegetable or leafy green assigned by the editors of Kitchen Butterfly and based on the Nigerian Seasonal Produce Calendar. Our author this month is Ramon – serial experimenter, documenter, eater with a le cordon...
I’ve always associated these walnuts with road trips since I was a child. Now, I see them on trays, little bags tied in cones, part black, part glistening. While in traffic a few weeks ago, I purchased a bag, tore it open and cracked a shell after ‘cleaning” it. It split in half, and I...
The first time I heard of a fruit with a name prefaced by ‘Monkey’ was in 2011, when I encountered ‘Epapa‘, which turned out to be one local name for Cola lepidota, aka Monkey Kola. It didn’t seem peculiar to me – I put it down to ‘things monkeys also ate in the forest’. Till...
It is the season of pepperfruit. It is. I find them on trays all around Warri – my birth city, where I spend Easter. I’m a fan only of the red ones – sweet tooth and all. But back in Lagos, I spot the green ones and buy some to compare. What I find is...
‘Nigerian Seasonal Produce’ is a monthly column which will be published on the last Saturday of every month. In this column, a writer explores a specific seasonal fruit, vegetable or leafy green assigned by the editors of Kitchen Butterfly and based on the Nigerian Seasonal Produce Calendar. Our author this month is Pemi who I first met...